Don's Tuesday column (couple of days late, sorry)

     THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   10/09/2012

It’s a wild ride in the political world

You can see “2016: Obama’s America” tonight at 6 PM at the Tea Party meeting, Westside Grange.

Last week’s column left off on Monday; I did my best to let readers know what had gone on from the standpoint of a participant – me. The story picks up with a visit to the Republican headquarters (Frontier Village, #16 on the east side, open from 10 AM to 4 or 5 PM, volunteers willing/needed) by Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Emken.

Reporter Rich Greene wrote a great news article on the visit; a local Action News (12/24) reporter/cameraman/interviewer got some footage of the candidate and attendees, who literally filled the room. Her pitch for election was well-recorded and is a solid case for replacing Senator “Doubtfire,” I mean Senator Feinstein, with someone who has the personal, professional experience and motivation to tackle our massive federal debt and reform health care. After the repeal of ObamaCare, President Romney and Republicans in Congress will need every wise hand and sharp mind to begin addressing the real challenges of escalating costs and diminishing results.

I asked her about the necessary reforms, after she concluded her formal remarks, and would recommend readers to visit Emken2012.com and click on the “Issues” drop down tab. There you’ll see further links to Health Care, Jobs, Regulations, Debt, Water, Energy and Tax Reform. First, allow me to disabuse discouraged Republicans of the notion that Diane Feinstein can’t be beat. A poll by Pepperdine University found Feinstein’s support at 45.9 percent, Emken’s support at 33.6 percent, with 20.6 saying they were “unsure.” That translates to voters already knowing the 3-term incumbent, and only favoring her by less than 46 percent. She is beatable!

As I said, I chatted with Ms. Emken about health care reform, a subject she says she was “drafted” into upon realizing she had an autistic son. It’s a moving personal story and it brought her to realize many things but that the first priority was to rectify the harm that has been done to health care freedom, you could say, by voluminous tax rules that codified the current preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance.

We must change it so that every dollar, from the first to the last, is deductible from one’s gross income. The current standard forces people to pay taxes on health care expenses that they incur, either personally or when they purchase their own insurance, until they reach a certain level. ObamaCare makes it worse by raising that level, resulting in a further tax penalty for those dealing with their own health care decisions. Government interference in limiting wages and benefits first brought about the preference for employer-provided insurance; the deleterious consequences must be remedied.

On that basis, people should be free to shop for health insurance from any state, and for the terms they find most beneficial to their circumstances; that would include tax-free medical savings accounts (using the many thousands of dollars already spent to pre-pay for insured care) that could allow people to shop for competitively priced routine care, and elective-but-necessary major surgery. Also, so-called “catastrophic care” policies could be economically purchased, not unlike auto insurance that provides coverage for “catastrophic” automotive events.

Other common sense solutions, that focus on personal freedom, personal responsibility and eliminating biased tax rules, could all work to vastly reduce the overhead when an insurance company is involved in even the most routine of care. How much would an oil change or tune up cost if you only paid 20 percent and a “car maintenance insurance” company paid the rest?

In response to another question that I asked, she agreed that major portions of our deficit are driven by the fact that large portions of so-called “income support” payments – food stamps, Medicaid, disability, unemployment and EITC (tax credit) – go to people that could provide for themselves if urged to move in that direction. Many not-entirely-indigent citizens, if offered employment options that would relieve them of the need for handouts from the government (meaning other tax-paying citizens), would happily become self-sufficient, leaving our limited public resources for the truly needy. Lower tax burdens for all would result, as it has in the past, in a surge in charitable giving, lessening the burden on public resources.

My week ended with a Sunday evening fundraiser for Jim Nielsen at a supporter’s ranch in Los Molinos, where I tasted some of the most tender, juicy, flavorful tri-tip to ever cross my tongue. Those cattle have a pretty sweet life chomping on Los Molinos pasture grass. I am grateful for their sacrifice. I take no small joy in rubbing elbows with my ideological brothers and sisters, breaking bread and showing our financial support for someone who will make us proud serving as State Senator.

Between Mitt Romney’s “stellar” and dominating debate showing, and subsequent polling bumps, I find the Colorado professors’ prediction for Romney to win around 330 electoral votes increasingly believable. However, a Romney win in all swing states but Ohio gives both him and Obama – 269. Oh boy.

According to the White House 2013 Budget Historical Tables, Table 1.3, the total of Bush deficits, from ’01 through ’08, totaled about $2 trillion; Obama’s deficits from ’09 to ’12 total over $5 trillion. Bush never signed a trillion-dollar-deficit 2009 budget; Obama did.